Day 7-Living Well and Spending Way Less-Profit!

I got so excited about making money during our Spend Way Less month, that I began to think of other ways to get money.  Sell things! Craiglist, Booko.com and local for sale pages are bountiful and quick ways to sell unwanted things.
We had bought these bar stools, thinking they would work, but were way too tall. Lesson learned, measure! Ha ha...but I got almost what we paid for them over a year ago.  That goes into the food budget. Which is good, because I had to get dog food for little BooBoo also. She is a finicky little thing, and her food is not cheap! But she is worth it.
The thing with selling, is to be fair on your price. Don't feel intimidated by the buyer. If you are willing to go lower, no worries, but if you really don't want the item, getting the cash is a bigger goal!
My girls and I went to Walmart today, and on the way out, I jokingly looked at the McDonalds and said, "Remember when we could eat there?" "just 8 days ago?" We were laughing and all the way home, would say, oooh, remember when we would shop there and drop $50 on things we didn't need, but it was fun? It was pure laughter.   We are on track to put over $1500 in savings if we stick to this plan.
Yesterday, I pulled up Quicken. We use it for our checking/debit account.   There is a great feature you can do to generate reports where your money goes.  I am pretty good about the categories. I pulled up the year to day report, and went thru the averages.  EEEK! We have been spending over $250 average a month on eating out. The worst is the miscellaneous! I was embarrassed at not knowing where it is going.  I spent almost $900 for groceries on average, and Tony and I talked about it, and think that is a very reasonable amount for a family of 8.  This month, I am only doing $600, and it is working, but tight. He thinks tight will cause us to throw in the towel, and eat out more.  He is soooooooooooooo right!
Our utilities are pretty good, except for electricity. It went higher than normal. I called a representative from the power company, and started the process to have an energy audit done on our house.  To see what we can do to bring that lower.
Today, I am gonna try and clear out our extra fridge and consolidate.  I think that old fridge is a major kilowatt sucker!
It is becoming more fun, to try and cut off the extra spending, especially when it builds our savings!

~never lose your joy